Note: at this time transcripts are automated and unedited, which means errors may occur. But we hope you find them helpful!

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Marketing Without Social Media. Now, before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that if you are a service-based business, think coaches, consultants, therapists, who wants to get to $7,000 plus recurring months, yes, every month, but needs help with growing your audience, maybe with generating regular leads or landing paying clients, then I’d like to invite you to a free.

[00:00:26] 15 minute leads. Game plan call. Yes, just 15 minutes to work on your marketing plan. This is a super fast pace call and in this call we are gonna take a look at your current situation to see what is and isn’t working for you right now in your business. We’re gonna figure out and identify what’s possible for you and your business in the next six months and beyond.

[00:00:48] We’re gonna uncover the number one. That is restricting your growth and holding you back right now. And finally, we are gonna develop a three step action plan. [00:01:00] Yes, three step action plan that will get you results in your business. A S A P. Now the session is, Free. It’s 15 minutes and all you have to do is head on over to viv guy.com/game plan.

[00:01:15] Yes, that’s viv guy.com/game Plan right now. Pick a day, pick a time that suits you and let’s chat. In this episode, I’m talking all about how to scale your collaborations within your business so you can continue to grow your business week on week, month on month, and year on year. Because you are one person and there will come a point when you cannot take on anything else yourself.

[00:01:44] So what happens when we reach that point now so often it’s let’s go out and get paid ads? Well, we’re gonna talk about what are. Are in this episode. So let’s dive in.[00:02:00]

[00:02:01] You’re listening to Marketing Without Social Media With me, Viv Guy, the podcast for people who want more clarity, connections, and cash in their business. I’ll be sharing with you proven techniques from leading entrepreneurs and experts from across the globe to help you to market without social media.

[00:02:21] And to grow your business in a way that actually feels good to you.

[00:02:34] Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Marketing Without Social Media with me, Viv Guy. So one of my favorite topics to talk about is collaborations and really tapping into borrowing. Other people’s audiences to grow your own. It is definitely the fastest way to grow your audience in the early days of your business.

[00:02:59] Okay, [00:03:00] I say early days. I’m not just talking first few weeks or months. I’m talking in the first few years, and it is a technique and strategy that is continuum used by some of the biggest business names we can think about. You know, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, Marie Folio, tacky. These people still do a lot of collaborations, but in different ways to how we might do it.

[00:03:24] So a lot of them will show up and do podcasts and collaborate that way. They may do affiliate partnerships collaborating through those kind of deals. So they use their collaborations in different ways to how we might do in the early days of our business. Okay, so that is awesome. But what I wanted to talk about today is what do you do when you reach the point within your business?

[00:03:48] You know, you have reached the point where you say, I haven’t got any more time. I’m, I’m collaborating with people that are already on my list and it’s fantastic, but I [00:04:00] just don’t have any more time to actually build the number and the volume of connections in order to grow slash scale my business to where I want it to get to, to make that next leap, if that is what your goal.

[00:04:14] This is an issue that I started to face myself in 2022, and I was thinking, how do I make that next leap? Because I am at capacity, okay. I am already outsourcing. I already have a team member helping me with administrative duties. A lot of the tech stuff that’s just ugh, boring to me. It’s not my my jam.

[00:04:36] It’s not my zone of genius. Um, so how can. Grow and scale my business further. Okay, so obviously I’m, I’m collaborating with people. I’m going, guest speaking and podcasting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of those kind of things. So, I was looking at my data as you should regularly, as I tell you, definitely review your data and what my data [00:05:00] was te telling me is when I go and show up in person, you know, on a live, people get to see me, people get to connect with me through a workshop, through an interview, then those are the people that convert into paying clients.

[00:05:16] Okay. Much more so than things like free bundles. So much higher volume of people are converting through seeing me show up. Okay. That’s probably because they get to tap into my energy more, which everyone always says like, oh, your energy, your energy. It’s just who I am. But that seems to be a real attraction point.

[00:05:34] So it got me to thinking, well, this is great, but there are only so many collaborations, workshops, things I can arrange to do, set up, so on and so forth. So what are my options? Well, when I looked at where my time was being spent, one of their big things is actually sort of finding out, researching, identifying new people who would be great people to [00:06:00] connect with.

[00:06:00] And this. Big time consuming task for me. Okay. Doing that research, finding people who are a good fit, and I’ve talked about this in the past, we wanna qualify not just the people that we are, um, inviting to work with us, but also we need to make sure we are qualifying, you know, who we wanna collaborate with, are they the right fit?

[00:06:19] Do they share the same sort of values and philosophies? Do the share the same audience types as the people as. . So this is something that we have to look at. So all this takes time, takes some research, and I, you know, always very interested in this. But when you have limited time, it becomes very difficult.

[00:06:37] So what are the options here? Okay, well the first thing for me when I looked at this was number one, maybe I need to start working with people who are bigger audiences. That is the obvious. Step as I am growing, I need to start reaching out to people with bigger audiences. Potentially that is option number one, and that would make sense.

[00:06:57] And I am not saying this is sorted yet. I am [00:07:00] now in experiment phase because there are pros and cons to people, you know, especially free groups. So I like to work and, and guest in masterminds, memberships and things like that versus free audiences. Um, you know, things like free Facebook groups and free communities like that because what I find is they just don’t convert as well.

[00:07:20] So actually if I’m still looking to work in masterminds and communities, I need to think about, okay, where are their? Bigger communities, bigger masterminds, and will they still have the same impact as the more small, intimate communities where everyone can come and ask me questions, we can talk, we can connect, and so on and so forth, because that seems to be what has worked for me so far.

[00:07:40] So this is something that I am going to be experimenting with in the first. Three to six months of 2023. Okay. It’s not a rushed experiment. It’s something I really want to take my time over to really analyze that data that I get from looking at changing the way I’m collaborating. You know, does it work?

[00:07:58] I will still continue to do the, the [00:08:00] more small and intimate groups that I have done and had a lot of success with, and then I will look to engage with some larger a. The second thing that I have done is I have taken on a collaboration coordinator on a sort of trial basis just to see how this works. Um, so adding someone to my team and this amazing person is, Researching and kind of really looking into who would be a good fit for me to collaborate and connect with.

[00:08:31] And for me, a collaboration is about long-term relationships. So we have to have shared values, philosophies, common ground, and actually. Get on and have a laugh. So it takes time to actually obviously look into who are those people listening to, their podcasts, so on and so forth. So I have now taken someone on to do that, to set up and reach out to those people on my behalf and set up the, the meetings, the opportunities for us to connect and develop a relationship and look [00:09:00] at how we could potentially collaborate and benefit, um, one another’s businesses and give value more importantly to one.

[00:09:08] audiences. Okay. So that could be through workshops, guest speaking, podcast guesting, and maybe creating some sort of joint course or bringing someone in as a guest speaker within my own programs for my clients. So whatever that looks like. So I have now invested and decided to and hired. So as of the start of November, 2022, I have taken on a collaboration coo.

[00:09:34] as a trial, as I said, for this experiment. What am I looking at with this experiment? Well, obviously, you know, how does this work? You know, , do we get great collaborations? Um, are we forming and, and identifying great people to collaborate with? Are the opportunities arising? Um, is my collaboration coordinator managing to.

[00:09:53] To arrange for me to go in and connect with people and are they becoming sort of fruitful, [00:10:00] viable relationships. So that’s gonna be a big key. And this obviously takes time. Okay. It does take some time. So that’s one of the big things I’ve done to see if I get, you know, and what is that return on investment.

[00:10:11] Cuz obviously, as you know, everything I talk about, the reason I talk about marketing without social media, And I qualify that by saying it is organic marketing without social media that I’m really talking about here. Where we are spending hours and hours and hours creating content, hanging out in Facebook groups or Instagram, all that kind of stuff.

[00:10:30] And you know, losing so many precious hours and not seeing a valuable return on investments. So that’s what I’m talking about here, that organic, kind of getting rid of the time on those kind of things that are not producing. Viable returns on investment because of the algorithms within social media. It is not designed to really generate you a great return on investment for free.

[00:10:50] They want you to pay for ads, of course. It’s a business, it’s a money making business. Um, so that is why obviously it’s really, it’s become more and more difficult, increasing the difficult over the [00:11:00] years for your organic content to actually generate you sustainable revenue without you having to produce epic amounts of.

[00:11:07] and again, that becomes really difficult at some point if you want to scale. So you will end up outsourcing that. But as I still stand by this, collaborations will grow your audience way faster than any organic content will, even if you are hiring a social media manager to do that for you. It’s all still gonna be collaborations where the money.

[00:11:28] At and the return on investment. So with that in mind, what I wanted to say is I will be very closely monitoring what return on investment I get from these collaborations. And obviously paying now for someone to do that research, uh, element for me and set up those collaborations. So that’s gonna be really, really interesting.

[00:11:51] Now one of the real benefits around collaboration is trust is imparted to you by the person who you are [00:12:00] collaborating with within their community. Okay? So they already have a community of fans, let’s call it. They have their fans, they’re fan base who trust them. They’ve followed them for a while.

[00:12:11] They’re kinda like, yeah, I really like what they say. And so when they recommend you by saying, I’m bringing this person in. Come listen to them, speak, come get their freebie, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is, trust is imparted, and trust is a really important step within the buyer’s journey. We have no me, like me, trust me, buy from me.

[00:12:31] Okay? So no me, like me. Trust me. Buy from me without trust. Okay? You are not going to get safe. Okay. Never, never gonna happen. So this is another be reason that collaboration is a much faster way to, to grow your audience and grow your business because you’re kind of fast tracking some of the steps that if someone just comes into your world cold, say through, uh, a Facebook ad.

[00:12:52] Then it’s going to be different. You know, there’s going to be a level of trust, a degree of trust already there. So they don’t necessarily need to go through [00:13:00] the the nurture sequence, the nurture journey that you offer to the same extent as someone that’s coming in cold. It skips a few steps. It fast tracks that process.

[00:13:10] So this is why collaboration is really, really important, but how do you determine what the right collaboration strategies are for. What are the options? Well, I’m offering you guys a free guide. You can download it at this link here. So listen up. It’s viv guy.com/ 21 ways two one ways hyphen two, okay?

[00:13:35] That’s viv guy.com. Slash 21 ways two one w a y s hyphen, and then the number two, grab that and it’s got 21 different ways that you can collaborate my favorite ways in order to grow your audience. But how do you choose? I do not want you to go out and start thinking, right, I’m gonna do all these 21 different ways.

[00:13:59] I [00:14:00] want you to look at which ways feel good for you. Not just one, maybe two, two or three. So you might say, actually, I really wanna go and I wanna be on podcast. But one podcast a month is not going to put it. If you say I’m gonna do podcast guesting, you need to be seriously going all in. I’m talking like at least maybe two podcasts, guesting slots a week.

[00:14:23] If you wanna speak in other people’s communities, again, you wanna be doing, you know, not just one a month, but you need to be doing. Several of these per month for it to be an effective strategy. Okay? Potentially you can sort of double up. So you might say, right, I’m gonna go and guest on someone’s podcast.

[00:14:40] Or for example, I have people come and guest with me. And then you might promote one another’s workshops or promote one another’s freebies, different things. Okay? So you can maximize collaboration opportunities. So you might say, well, this is my collaboration workflow. If you wanna call it a workflow or system process.

[00:14:59] [00:15:00] So I’m gonna maybe reach out to someone and say, Hey, come on my podcast. Or Hey, you know, have me on your podcast. I’m freaking awesome. And then you might say, okay, let’s promote one another’s freebies. Now on each other’s. email list, and then we might say, right, what have you got coming up in terms of workshops?

[00:15:16] Let’s promote to one another’s workshops. You might even say, Hey, the next part of that is I want to get them into my mastermind, or that might come earlier on in the process. If you think about when you map out a bias journey, I want you to think about mapping out a collaboration journey. So instead of seeing this as like a one hit wonder where.

[00:15:33] Just make a connection. Go and speak on someone’s podcast and then never speak to ’em again. Think about how can this become a really beneficial two-way relationship for you both that benefits your businesses and your audiences. Okay? What? How are you bringing value to one another? And how are you doing that over a duration of time?

[00:15:52] And you might do this, you might have this process in place, this system, this workflow, this sy you know, method and say, right, I’m gonna do that once a year. [00:16:00] Maybe you might not do the podcast recording again if you’ve already done that, but you might go in, I have someone I collaborate with and I go in and guest speak on her mastermind once a year to her new cohort.

[00:16:10] So we do that every year. That’s a thing. It’s like a rinse and repeat cycle. Um, obviously potentially new topic. Always like to tailor it to what’s relevant for people. So I’ll always say, I get ’em to write into me and tell me what’s going on for them, and I’ll tailor a workshop. So I really want you to think about where that value is for people.

[00:16:27] Okay. But as we said at the start of today, you know, what are those options? What is, you know, how do we maximize, especially if we’re becoming very time poor within our business and we’re growing, how do we. Each relationship, each collaboration that we make, so that we get a really great lasting benefit from each of those, because that is what is gonna be, that is going to be what helps you to grow your business.

[00:16:51] If you think about, you know, the likes of, I mentioned at the start, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, they, uh, they definitely do some affiliate work for one [00:17:00] another. I was listening to Denise Tofield Thomas interview, uh, Jeff Walker from her P L F Product Launch Formula, and she’s an affiliate for. And so you have to think like this collaborations here as well in the sense that that collaboration is like once a year Jeff launches plf.

[00:17:17] So she will talk about that, promote that comes into her cycle. Um, and she’s also in his world as a case study. And by be sharing that interview, it brings people into her world. So there’s a, a mutual benefit. And also it brings her revenue as well, the more people she gets into to Jeff’s, um, program. So again, there are ways to, to grow your audience and grow your revenue through those kind of collaborations and developing those further.

[00:17:41] Now, I will say this, I have not dabbled in the affiliate route yet, but it is something I am looking at bringing into my business later this year. But for me, not in the traditional affiliate way. So right now I have a referral partner. This is [00:18:00] where I find it quite difficult and I will do a different episode on this, um, because there are some things about how spammy affiliate, uh, schemes can be where you get sent all the copy you have to send out and you are obliged really for an affiliate partner to send out 21,000 emails.

[00:18:14] 10,000 social media posts, whatever it is, I, I exaggerate with those numbers, obviously. Excuse me. And that just never feels great to me. So I need to find a way that feels good in terms of marketing, um, and using affiliates, if that is, if I can make that work. And so that’s something I’ll be experimenting with later this year.

[00:18:32] So the final point I want to make is, Yes, there comes a time in your business when doing all the collaboration stuff yourself becomes difficult. Yeah. You will not have the capacity and time to grow your business, to scale your business to where you want it to go to. and do all of that collaboration reach out as well as delivery, so on and so forth.

[00:18:54] Marketing all on your own. So as I said, step number one is obviously outsource. [00:19:00] Outsource the elements of that that you can, as you would, when you take on your first ba, you outsource your accounts, all of those kind of start starting points within your business. Okay? So you can start by outsourcing some of your collaboration elements alongside this.

[00:19:17] This is where depending how much you wanna scale your business. I mean, I’m talking like, do you want to suddenly start thinking right next year I want to double, triple, quadruple my revenue. I really want to kind of go big, really big. Okay. Depending where you are at and what your goals are. This is where I’m gonna start suggesting we need to look beyond just collaborations.

[00:19:38] This is where we’re gonna bring in an additional strategy. It could be for you, you say, right? I mean, I, I’m now at the point where I want to start investing in paid ads and try that. I might want to outsource and hire, uh, uh, a copywriter to write blogs for me, like search engine optimized blogs so that I can start bringing in traffic through search.

[00:19:59] [00:20:00] So this is where now we start thinking right there is going to be potentially a threshold with how much I can grow my business, scale, my business with collaborations alone. So what are my options beyond this? Okay. Or you might say, I have an entire collaboration team who do all of this stuff, but at the end of the day, people want to hear from you, and your time is a limited finite resource.

[00:20:26] So there will be only so much that you can do collaboration wise. And if you look at it, this is where. , you know, the big multi seven figure business owners, and I’ve mentioned a few today just that came to the top, top of my head. They’re my top favorites, but who have multiple marketing channels, you know?

[00:20:44] So yes, they use social media. Yes, they do guesting on podcasts. They do live summits and and events and conferences and go guest speak, public speaking. So there are different. and it’s looking at what are the ma the opportunities that allow me to really get the [00:21:00] biggest return on investment for my time?

[00:21:02] And this is what we always need to come back to. And this is why I always say data is so important. I want you to understand where are your clients coming from? What was the journey that brought them to the point of saying, yes, I want to get on a call with you or wanna work with you on a Hi. Whatever that looks like for.

[00:21:19] Were they on your email list? Did where did they originally hear you? How did they get on that email list? Did they hear you speak? What was that journey and process and understand that. And then look at how can I do more of this? And is there a threshold? Is there a ceiling where I’m not gonna be able to do that anymore?

[00:21:35] And at that point, what else can I do that could bring in and help me grow my audience so I can grow my. So there you have it, folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Marketing Without Social Media Today, and feel inspired to take action in your business, whatever that looks like for you. And as always, thank you.

[00:21:58] Thank you. Thank you. For [00:22:00] tuning into another episode of this podcast, and if you haven’t done so already, please do subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode. Speak to you soon.